Tale of Two Ties (Phor Phonetc Eez)

One of the reasons that Julia and I were eager to make the move to Taiwan (Tie One) is the ease and opportunity for travels around Asia.  So we hadn’t even been in Taiwan for 2 months and it was time to leave for Thailand (Tie Two as it were)... 

We wanted to get out and do something active whilst traveling, and through the miracle of the interwebs we were able to find a really great bicycle tour operator based in the Northern Thailand town of Chiang Rai www.chiangraibicycletour.com   It was a small group, just 5 of us riding.  Me and Julia, a couple from the US and a woman from Belgium.  Bee, the company owner was on the bikes with us and his brother Anek (whose name I’m most likely butchering on spelling) drove the truck with our bags and water and snacks for along the road.  This wasn’t a monster ride through the mountains kind of trip that Julia and I have done in the past, but it was a great way to get out and see the countryside and travel in a way we love.  The riding was good, a mix of mostly pavement and some dirt roads (no single track, though).  We were on mountain bikes which was good, as some roads were pretty sketchy in terms of pavement.  But a  roads department with signs this cool can get away with it....

We stopped regularly at sights along our route, like The White Temple, which was pretty amazing - it's a more contemporary take on a Buddhist Temple.  It’s still very much under construction and we had the chance to see the craftspeople at work building the incredibly ornate parts for later application to the buildings.  

Lunches and dinners were amazing - little hole in the wall places but really tasty food.  Who knew you could get such great Thai food in Thailand? There was a bicycle stage race going on while we were there - we followed some of the same routes as the race. We're thinking of going back one of these years to do it - it looks fun - some dirt, some pavement and some trail riding.

As travel goes, it was, we hope, reasonably friendly to the locals and their economy. We stayed at a cool, very eco friendly guesthouse on the banks of a river that was nice, we could feel good about that - the money was staying within the Karen Hill Tribe community.  After we left the aforementioned guest house we stopped to ride some elephants.  I was really torn by this as I have a hard time with those particular animals being in any kind of captivity - and yet, my desire to have a chance to be up close to such a magnificent, hulking animal does not come along too often - and it was already a part of the trip.  The economic piece of it was warm and fuzzy - the animals themselves are owned in shares by the members of the local community.  I just hope that they are well cared for - not knowing anything about elephant care, I couldn’t say, but I know they’re really intelligent animals and they’re pressed into a routine of repeated laps around the same walk - up the hill, around, back down, into the river, walk downstream, back on the road to the start and then either chained up to wait for the next customers or straight back out with two more people riding on their backs to do it all again (and again, day after day).  I hope that they get at least some small chance to be simply an elephant and do the elephant things that elephants do without somebody literally on their back about stuff.  As cool as it was to be that close to them - (the highlight was a rather healthy trumpet from one of them right next to us) - I won’t do it again - I know that millions more will and that many more elephants will be consigned to walking endless laps with goofy tourists on their backs, but I’ll let them do it without me I think.

There were Buddhist temples all around the countryside - sometimes in sight of one another.  Many of them had shaded spots that we used for our breaks off the bike, so in addition to visiting ‘special’ ones like the White Temple, we saw many that were comparatively more ‘average’ and yet still spectacular.  

We also stopped at an enormous happy Buddha, which was probably 30 or 35 meters high, and he was perched upon the top of a building built at the top of a hill in rather spectacular fashion - really amazing to see.

Our last day on the bikes took us to the Golden Triangle - the area where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar/Burma meet.  We took a longtail boat ride up the Mekong to right where the three countries intersect - with Thailand and Laos separated by the Mekong and Thailand and Myanmar by a much smaller river that flows into the Mekong.  After we got off the boat we walked around a little town where I spied the benches below.  The area is named the Golden Triangle at least partly due to the flow of drugs and in turn gold both in the past, and sadly, the present.  Sounds like mostly Opium in the past and more Meth today.  For Americans reading this, you’ll be happy to know that our demand for drugs in the US leads to yet another arm of our government getting out to spread goodwill around the planet, offering hard tile, er, comfy places to sit.  I guess the older ones with Nancy Reagan’s face and a word balloon saying ‘Just say no to drugs’ wore out and we replaced them with this more workmanlike model? Dunno....  But in a stroke of marketing genius, fortunately 1 of the15 or so of these that I saw had the message in Thai - so we can feel good that the message about this reward program is really getting out there, winning hearts, minds and asses with this cool blue tile pile of comfy seating.  

We worked out our travel so that we had some time in Bangkok before the start and after the finish of our time on the bikes.  Bangkok is an amazing, sprawling over the top city.  2 days of city exploring was just about right for us both - we visited the Grand Palace, a bunch of other Temples,  got held up in traffic for the King’s motorcade, hung out by the really nice pool at our hotel, ate amazing food, saw a giant lizard crawl out of a sewer drain, (he stayed under a car so I couldn’t really get a picture worth sharing - but it was nearly a meter long and bigger around than my bicep in the middle (I know, that’s a weedy cyclist/runner’s bicep, but still!)... we walked all over the city and generally relaxed.  It was a great trip!